Moving World Wednesday 20130612

Hello you, here’s this weeks roundup of business, tech and creative news from across the Moving World! Many thanks to all who submitted links!

THERE SHE WHISTLE BLOWS
The main story this week has been the National Security Agency scandal, where information was revealed by employee Edward Snowden, on how the US government gathering telephone and internet information and involving tech giants such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.

These companies have since stated the government has no direct access to their systems, and they have not known of this since its start in 2007. Open responses were swift too, such as Yonatan Zunger of Google+ publicly stating they had no involvement and Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Facebook have also sent an open call to authorities to allow them to release the true number of secret requests they receive asking for users’ information.

The visible determination within these companies to remain transparent is large, amongst all of the scandal they wish to be seen (in Google’s words) “standing up for individual users’ privacy and protection” and not for the government. Concerns surrounding the implication of this scandal for the companies cited to be involved are high. Security issues such as these, in addition with the uncertainties that come surrounding cloud based data storage, is an uncomfortable situation to be in.

APPLE JUICEIn this week’s second i’m-sure-you-havent-missed-it-but-lets-talk-about-it-anyway; Apple delivered their 2013 keynote this week with announcements surrounding new products and updates to iOS7, MacBook Air, Mac Pro and iTunes Radio.

There were a few self-deprecating and telling references to skeuomorphic design (a favourite of recently departed Scott Forstall and a pet peve of current head of design Jonathan Ive) as the new iOS7 design is all about simplicity (as you can immediately see from this iOS6 vs iOS7 icon comparison slide). These changes, (uncomfortably close to the direction Windows 8 has taken) has led people to question if Apple have copied their competitors.

MACHINE GO
Just launched! We have been working with breakthrough band Duologue on an interactive 3D music video for their new single Machine Stop.

With the ambition of giving their fans a way to take control of their music video, we shot the scene in 3D and built a web experience that allows visitors to influence the angles and depth of the shoot, choose between viewing the dancer or band’s performance, and dictate the colour balance of the monochromatic film.

To achieve this, we invented an end-to-end system to meet the challenge of filming, editing and hosting a film created from over 1.5 billion lines of raw data.